Saskatoon group caught with kilos of meth is back on trial after judge overturns acquittal

(Chad Hills / CTV News)

A man and woman in Saskatoon who had two kilograms of methamphetamine seized from a home are going back to trial after having their acquittals overturned.

The Saskatoon Police Service received information that Thomas James Arendt and Kayleigha Shaneih Anneleise Bear may be involved in drug trafficking in 2022. They began surveillance of Arendt’s home, observed several short meetings with him and visitors, and applied for a search warrant based on that information.

When their application was rejected, the officer applying for the warrant — the affiant — revised the application based on the shortcomings described by the judge, and resubmitted. After getting the warrant, police searched the home and found about two kilograms of methamphetamine, cash and paraphernalia.

Arendt and Bear were later acquitted of the charges when a judge reviewed the warrant application and found Saskatoon police had fabricated details about the suspects that didn’t match the surveillance logs they were drawn from.

As a result, the seized drugs weren’t admissible as evidence, and the two were acquitted of the charges. The Crown lawyers appealed that judgment in April.

Now, three justices on Saskatchewan’s highest court have sided with the Crown.

While they agreed there were clear issues with the warrant, Justice Brian Barrington-Foote writes the judge overstepped his limited role in reviewing the warrant application. More than just removing inaccuracies, the reviewing judge went so far as determining the affiant was not an accurate witness.

By comparing the surveillance logs to what was written in the warrant application, reviewing judge Quentin Agnew found the police were overstating their evidence by including elements that were “entirely fictional,” including a description of one person emerging from Arendt’s house, hunched over and manipulating what police believed to be drugs.

“This ‘observation’ has no basis in the evidence, and accordingly, neither does the commentary,” Agnew wrote.

In their application, police alluded to previous drug trafficking and weapons charges against Arendt, even though he was acquitted or received a stay of proceedings on those counts — no convictions.

Agnew also took issue with the way police phrased their observations to imply guilt, without reference to further evidence.

“The weakness of the affiant’s evidence, in referring to events ‘believed to be’ or ‘consistent with’ drug transactions, and the weakness of assertions based on the affiant’s ‘experience as a police officer and drug investigator’ without further explanation” cast the entire application into doubt, Agnew wrote.

However, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal says it wasn’t Agnew’s role to determine the overall credibility of the investigators, simply to remove portions of the warrant application that were inaccurate.

“He mistakenly held that it fell to him as the reviewing judge to determine whether the affiant and the evidence remaining after the excisions were reliable,” Barrington-Foote said.

“By doing so, he substituted his view for that of the issuing judge,” he said.

“I am persuaded that, absent the legal error, he may well have reached a different bottom-line conclusion.”

Since Arendt and Bear were acquitted after Agnew deemed the seized drugs inadmissible as evidence, the decision of the appeal court means their acquittals have been overturned and they’re heading back to trial.